Planetary Disaster:
Indonesian Fires Illustrate Costs of Forest Ecosystem Collapse
10/13/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
For the past two decades the rainforests of Southeast Asia, including
Indonesia and Malaysia, have been subjected to an unprecedented
industrial rainforest harvest. Tremendous fortunes, political clout
and short-term economic advancement have been achieved through a
virtual mining of rainforest ecosystems in Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere. The long-term ecological results
of clearly unsustainable forest management practices are being
realized as much of Southeast Asia is blanketed in life-threatening
cloud of haze as the remaining fragmented and diminished rainforests
are ablaze.
Indonesia's forests are going up in smoke. President Suharto has
called the fires "a natural disaster," but an economic policy based on
the over-exploitation of the archipelago's natural resources and the
corruption entrenched in Indonesia's forestry industry have fuelled
the blaze. Blame also lies with international investors keen to get
their noses in the trough of the tiger economies of the Pacific rim.
The role of timber estates, big plantation companies and
transmigration contractors in the fire shatters the myth that
Indonesia's forest peoples are the main agents of destruction in the
sad story of the overexploitation of Indonesia's forests.
It is critical for humanities future survival that the rainforest
management mistakes made in Southeast Asia are not repeated elsewhere.
The scale of operation and intensity of harvest practiced
indiscriminately and with severe ecological consequences in Southeast
Asia must not be repeated in the last great forest expanses and
critical global ecosystems of Brazil, Africa, Russia, Papua New
Guinea, Canada and elsewhere. And finally, the last remaining tracts
of Southeast Asian rainforests must be either preserved or managed
with low-impact, certified harvesting techniques to maintain a matrix
of intact and carefully managed natural forest cover. Forest
restoration of both natural forests and production plantations will
play a critical role in repairing damaged ecological systems. Failure
to pursue a policy of strict preservation, certified forestry and
forest restoration will lead to continued severe ecological
degradation and resultant human suffering for year to come.
Glen Barry
LIST NOTE: I would have preferred to be tracking this story weekly, as
would have been the case if I had not been overseas. However, given
the backlog and the importance of this major rainforest news event,
here are 8 significant reports over the past couple weeks concerning
this continuing human tragedy. Each provides a slightly different
take on the situation.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
ITEM #1
Title: Indonesia Fires Hit National Parks--Pressure Group
Source: Reuters
Status: (c) Reuters Limited 1997
Date: 10/9/97
Byline: Gerrard Raven
LONDON - The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Wednesday forest
and brush fires sweeping Indonesia had now reached at least 17 of the
country's huge national parks, increasing the threat to wildlife,.
Sounding the alarm at the increasing deforestation of the globe, the
pressure group predicted a fresh crisis in Indonesia when the long-
awaited monsoon rains wash ash into swelling rivers, heightening the
risk of floods.
"It seems that the fires have jumped into primary forests where there
should be no commercial activity and which are therefore most
important for wildlife," Francis Sullivan, director of the Fund's
Forests for Life Campaign, told a London news conference.
The Fund's programme office in Jakarta has been closely monitoring the
fires, caused by the clearing of land for farming or settlements,
which have caused a blanket of pollution which has spread to
neighbouring South-East Asian countries.
Sullivan said national parks in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi
and Irian Jaya were now ablaze and rare animals, including at least 29
Orang Utans, were known to have perished.
"We are all praying for rain. You just cannot put out fires covering
hundreds of thousands of hectares (acres)," he said.
"But we fear another disaster is waiting to happen downstream when the
ash is washed into the rivers, clogging them and producing a clear
risk of flooding."
The Fund estimated the fires would also add significantly to global
warming as they would cause the equivalent of at least half of
Indonesia's normal annual production of carbon dioxide as well as
other more noxious chemicals.
Sullivan was launching a report by the Fund, backed by Britain's World
Conservation Monitoring Centre, which showed that of the 8,080 million
hectares (20.2 million acres) of forests in the world 8,000 years ago,
62 percent had disappeared.
Only six percent of what remains is protected against development or
logging, the report showed.
The Fund is urging all countries to protect at least 10 percent of
their remaining forests to ensure they remain viable ecosystems,
especially targeting the United States, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia,
which between them have half the world's remaining forests.
"The frightening thing is that the pace of forest destruction has
accelerated rapidly over the last five years and continues to rise,"
Sullivan said.
Garo Batmanian, who heads the group's Brazilian operation, said
Indonesian-style problems were hitting the country where government
monitoring showed that fires to clear forest and pasture were up 25
percent this year.
Health problems had become serious in the city of Manaus in the Amazon
basin, whose one million people were living under a thick blanket of
smog with a radius of 80 kilometres (50 miles).
Smoke had closed some regional airports 20 to 30 times in the past
month, Batmanian said.
**********
ITEM #2
Title: Indonesia counts the cost of forest fires
Source: Agence France-Presse
Status: Copyright 1997 by Agence France-Presse
Date: 10/6/97
JAKARTA, Oct 6 (AFP) - Forest fires have cut a 96,000 hectare(237,120
acre) scar across Indonesia and cost more than 45 billion rupiah (12.5
million dollars) in other damage, a minister said Monday.
Forestry Minister Jamaluddin Suryohadikusomo said the financial loss
had come from 15,600 hectares (38,532 acres) of plantations being used
to grow profitable commodities such as palm oil and rubber.
The remaining 80,000 hectares were forest areas, including protected
and national forests, Suryohadikusumo said, giving his ministry's
first estimate of damage.
He said companies found guilty of illegal burning would be held
accountable for damage and faced having operating licenses revoked.
The government has already revoked 151 licenses for 29 companies who
were unable to disprove allegations supported by satellite images that
the fires burning on their land had been started deliberately.
Of the 151 permits, 69 were held by four government companies, the
Media Indonesia daily reported.
A company controlled by timber baron Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, a
confidante of President Suharto, was among the companies that had
licenses withdrawn last Friday.
Hasan last week rejected blame for the fires, maintaining that small
farmers and brush fires were mainly responsible for the destruction of
up to 800,000 hectares (1.97 million acres) of forests this year,
according to non-official estimates from satellite images.
Suryohadikusomo said the fires in plantations had begun to subside and
that most of the fires still burning were in beach areas where small
farmers were still burning land.
"But they (the farmers) should not be blamed as they are poor and have
no money," Suryohadikusumo said.
He said the government was training 8,600 personnel with financial
assistance from the United States, Canada and Germany to fight fires
that have cast a pall of choking smoke over much of Indonesia and
neighboring countries.
Air quality has reached alarming poor levels in provinces throughout
the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan while areas in Java were also
reporting a deterioration in air quality Monday.
Sukardi, the deputy chief of the state-run Environmental Impact
Management Agency, said the fires that have ravaged several
mountainous areas on Java had "influenced the air quality in some
cities on the northern coast, particularly Jakarta."
Sukardi said the number of serious fires and the amount of haze coming
from the fires had decreased but added that the problem was not over
yet, Media Indonesia reported.
"Although the number of hot spots have gone down considerably, in some
areas the haze is still thick, like in South Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu,
West Sumatra and South Kalimantan," he said.
Bengkulu and Jambi are provinces on Sumatra.
The smog has also disrupted aviation and sea traffic in addition to
causing respiratory complications for more than 40,000 people, six of
whom have died from smoke-related ailments.
A Jambi meteorology office employee told AFP on Monday the haze "is
still very bad today" with daytime visibility of about 10 meters
(yards).
"It was somewhat better on Friday and Saturday, but it has
deteriorated again since Sunday," he said.
He added that most kindergarten and elementary school children, who
were supposed to resume lessons on Monday after being ordered to stay
home since the end of September, were kept at home.
**********
ITEM #3
Title: The Threatened Planet--South Asia's Year of Reckoning
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Status: Copyright 1997 by Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 10/6/97
Byline: LOUISE WILLIAMS in Jakarta and MARK BAKER in Kuala Lumpur
THE dream dies hard. The forests which once humbled humankind are now
broken and burning. And as the world awakens to an ecological disaster
in south-east Asia, the naivete of those who trusted in the permanence
of nature - and the conceit and greed of those who challenged it - is
being laid bare.
The early explorers of Borneo found a tropical canopy so dense that
from a distance the tops of the trees looked like smooth fields of
grass. It was said an orangutan could travel from the south to the
north of the vast island without descending from the treetops.
So moist was the forest, soaking up the rains which fell four days out
of five on average, that it lay like a moist band round the equator.
These were the cool, clean lungs of Asia.
Now Asia's lungs, laid open by decades of rampant logging, are ablaze,
and tens of millions of people are choking in vast clouds of smog. And
now it is not just the great trees which are burning - the land itself
is on fire. Tens of thousands of hectares of rainforest peat, the most
important natural element in fighting greenhouse carbon gases, have
been ignited and are facing permanent destruction.
As the vast blanket of smog which has enveloped more than half of
south-east Asia spread further last week - with major new fires
breaking out in peninsular Malaysia and on the Indonesian island
of Lombok, near the tourist beaches of Bali - international
authorities and environment agencies began to sound the alarm
bells of a major catastrophe.
There were dire predictions of multi-billion dollar losses in forest
and agricultural production, in collapsed tourist revenues and
crippled transport services, and the incalculable loss of rainforest
plant and animal species.
More alarming were estimates of a sharply rising toll in human death
and injury, and a long-term jump in disease and illness. And for the
planet itself, a calamitous outcome: the likely speeding of the
process of global warming.
More than 600,000 hectares of forest have already been destroyed, with
thousands of fires continuing to burn out of control. An estimated
200,000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have been forced
to seek hospital treatment for the effects of prolonged exposure to
dangerously high levels of air pollution.
Indonesia has confirmed at least five deaths directly attributed to
the pollution and the choking haze has been blamed for the loss of 28
seamen who disappeared after two ships collided in thick smog in the
Straits of Malacca last Friday. It is also said to have contributed to
the earlier crash of a Garuda airliner in Sumatra, in which all 234
passengers and crew were killed.
As the United Nations called for a co-ordinated international response
and countries including Australia began sending money and expert
assistance, the World Wide Fund for Nature described the crisis as a
planetary disaster.
"The sky in south-east Asia has turned yellow and people are dying,"
said the WWF's director, Mr Claude Martin. "What we are witnessing is
not just an environmental disaster but a tremendous health problem
being imposed on millions of people."
There were warning signs months ago. The first tell-tale "hot spots"
began to appear on the satellite maps prepared by the World
Meteorological Organisation in May. On the satellite images they were
merely tiny red dots. On the ground, they were raging fires, with
columns of thick, black smoke spewing up into the blue skies as they
consumed the trees and the land on which they stood.
AT the time, most Indonesians thought the fires were normal. For at
least two decades fire has routinely been used to clear scrub,
grassland and logged-over forests to make way for plantations of
cash crops: row after row of stubby oil palms, and endless expanses of
the stringy, narrow trunks of rubber trees, where once stood the
magnificent dense canopy of the tropical rainforests.
Every year since the last great drought of 1982-83, tens or hundreds
of thousands of hectares of the most important remaining tracts of
tropical forest in Asia have been lost to fire before the monsoon
rains arrived to put out the flames.
At Bapedal, the Indonesian Government's Agency for Environmental
Impact Control, experts knew the nightmare had already begun. "We
knew about the El Nin~o forecast and the drought that was coming,"
says one official. "So we sent out warnings to all our regional
offices. We asked them to tell the plantations and the farmers not to
burn. But they did."
Within two months, the "hot spot" maps were screaming an alarming
message. In the Riau province of Sumatra, almost 200 fires were
burning. By September, 650 fires were raging in central Kalimantan,
and thousands more nationwide.
Airline flights were in chaos, the sun had disappeared above the new
canopy of smoke, and the Indonesian Government announced that at least
20 million people were facing health risks due to the thick and
poisonous smog.
And still the expected rains did not come.
Along the roads through the fire zones, a terrible vista of
destruction lay shrouded in dense smoke. The fires were raging out of
control. All that was left were blackened stumps and browned, curled
leaves. So vast was the smoke cloud that the source fires were lost
somewhere inside.
Many of the tens of millions of Indonesian villagers whose water
supplies were dwindling in the drought armed themselves with branches
and face-cloths, and tried to stamp the blazes out. The smoke, they
say, left them tired and ill - eyes smarting, throats rasping. The
medical explanation, according to the Association of Indonesian Lung
Doctors, is simple. Gases in the smoke, like carbon dioxide, nitrogen
oxide and sulphur dioxide are absorbed by the blood faster than
oxygen.
On the ground the people are choking, their blood oxygen levels
dwindling as the smoke grows thicker.
By early last month, smoke from the Indonesian fires had spread more
than 2,000 kilometres across equatorial south-east Asia, enveloping
most of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, and stretching north and east
into Thailand and the Philippines.
In Kuala Lumpur, already choking under a pall of its own industrial
and traffic fumes, the smoke from the fires in nearby Sumatra blocked
out the sun for weeks on end and sent pollution index readings to
dangerous new highs. In the east Malaysian State of Sarawak, on
Borneo, the smog generated by fires in neighbouring Indonesian
Kalimantan brought pollution to world record levels and forced the
declaration of a 10-day state of emergency before rains and a wind
shift brought temporary relief last week.
In the Sumatran province of Jambi, where visibility has hovered around
20 metres for a month, 64,000 people have sought medical treatment.
Indonesia has no air pollution monitoring equipment and provides no
information for the public on the dangers of the air they are
breathing.
In the forests of Kalimantan, the extent of the suffering remains
unclear. Many indigenous communities, their culture based on deep
spiritual respect for the forests, face food and water shortages, and
poisonous smoke. They do not live along the main roads, so their
plight is hidden from view.
For years, the Jakarta Government has been dismissing the summer fires
as the irresponsible action of the dwindling forest tribes whose
shifting cultivation methods involve the burn-off of tiny squares of
land for mountain rice cultivation. The extent of the Government's own
complicity in much more extensive fire-clearing was papered over.
WITH the rising international price of palm oil, the Indonesian
Government has actively sought to topple Malaysia as the world's
largest producer of the commodity, which is used to produce soap,
margarine and cooking oil. By 2000, Indonesia wants to double its
area under palm oil cultivation to 5.5 million hectares.
This year, about 300,000 hectares of virgin rainforest was approved
for "conversion" to palm oil plantations. Clear- felling of trees for
wood, followed by burn-offs, are the quickest and cheapest way of
obtaining more land. And under Indonesia's lax reforestation laws,
replanting virgin forests with palm oil or rubber plantations
constitutes compliance.
In the 1960s, 82 per cent of Indonesia's land cover was tropical
forest - some of the most remote and biologically diverse patches
of green on Earth. Now, the forest cover has shrunk to 53per cent,
including plantations. The World Bank estimates 15 million hectares of
virgin forest has been turned into unproductive scrubland and another
20 million hectares of watershed land is in critical condition.
The bank estimates another 800,000 hectares of forest is being lost
each year, suggesting that even replanting with palm oil plantations
is lagging behind the clearance rate. Hundreds of millions of dollars
from the Government's reforestation fund have been diverted to the
development of an Indonesian aircraft and other non-environmental
purposes. It is not surprising that most of Indonesia's big logging
concession-holders and plantation owners boast cosy political ties to
the ruling elite.
The first to break ranks was Indonesia's Environment Minister, Mr
Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, who has tracked the satellite hot spots to
the owners of 176 plantations and forestry concessions. The owners, he
said, treated his officials with contempt, claiming friends with
political connections and immunity from prosecution.
"It's easy for them, sitting in their air-conditioned offices," Mr
Sarwono said, announcing he would hound the companies until they
proved their innocence. Nearly three weeks later, his eyes are
watering with fatigue and emotion. He and his staff have operated 24
hours a day monitoring the blazes.
While suffering neighbours have been quick to point the finger at
Indonesia, some of them are equally culpable. Unchecked and
unsustainable logging over recent decades, often by companies
with connections at the highest political level, has decimated the
native forests of Thailand and the Philippines, and severely depleted
Malaysia's reserves.
Big Malaysian logging companies, which have played a leading role in
the destruction of tropical rainforests in the South Pacific, are
actively involved in logging operations in Indonesia. At least 40
Malaysian companies with local partners are among those holding
permits to clear large areas of Indonesia for new palm oil and rubber-
tree plantations.
At independence 40 years ago, 70 per cent of Malaysia was forested.
Now, the area is less than 40 per cent. More than 14 million cubic
metres of timber a year is being stripped from the precious forests of
Borneo in the Malaysian States of Sarawak and Sabah, much of it by
companies which pay only lip service to sustainable forestry
practices.
Last week - in the midst of the international outcry over forest
clearance and air pollution - the Government of Dr Mahathir Mohamad
agreed to open up another 1.7 million hectares of virgin forest in
Sabah to commercial logging.
Malaysian environmentalists estimate that at least a third of the smog
which has choked Kuala Lumpur for the past two months, and some of its
most toxic elements, is generated by local industry and traffic. Yet
in 1994 the Malaysian Cabinet, ignoring the warnings of its own
experts, threw out a comprehensive "Clean Air Action Plan" to control
industrial air pollution. The cost to Malaysia's treasured economic
growth targets was considered too high.
"This Government has shown it is not serious about taking the steps
needed to protect the environment," said the head of the Malaysian
Centre for Environment, Technology and Development, Mr Gurmit Singh.
"The haze is basically an internal problem. We can't just blame it on
the Indonesians."
Some experts are predicting the smog crisis will get much worse over
the next few months and could last until at least next May. There are
signs the El Nin~o effect is extending the drought and may even
suppress the annual north-east monsoon, stopping the rains which are
the only hope of dousing the massive fires.
If that happens, the fires are expected to spread and new outbreaks
are certain across Indonesia and Malaysia, building even higher levels
of air pollution. But the biggest concern of environmentalists is that
the fires are already moving into large areas of peat forest, the most
fragile of tropical ecosystems. The peat can burn unchecked and unseen
beneath the forest floor for months. Once burnt, it is gone forever.
The peat forests, formed over thousand of years, are the true lungs of
the planet, drawing vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, and
countering global warming. A quarter of south-east Asia's 20 million
hectares of peat forest - most of it in Indonesia and Malaysia - has
already been lost to logging and land clearing, and much of that
remaining has been seriously degraded.
AN authority on peat forests, Mr Faizal Parish, who is executive
director of the independent agency Wetlands International, based
at the University of Malaya, says the damage already caused by the
forest-fires in Indonesia may result in a 5 per cent increase in
global greenhouse gases.
Mr Parish is alarmed by a fire which broke out last week in a peat
forest in the State of Pekan, on the east coast of peninsular
Malaysia, and which has already destroyed 1,000 hectares. "If the
remaining 250,000 hectares of that forest catch fire, and there must
be a real risk of that, it will create as much smoke again as all the
fires now burning in Indonesia," he said.
What is hardest to calculate is the short-term and longer-term effect
of the continued exposure of millions of people to the dangerous
levels of air pollution created by the fires.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of minute particles are being released
into the atmosphere by the smoke. These can penetrate deep into the
lungs and bloodstream, and are known, at much smaller levels of
exposure, to cause respiratory and cardio-vascular disease, heighten
cancer risks and increase birth defects. "How many people will fall
sick and die in later years is the million-dollar question," says the
head of the World Health Organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Dr Hishashi
Ogawa.
As intermittent rain and shifting winds brought temporary relief to
Kuala Lumpur last week, there were signs of renewed complacency. But
the wind-shifts which helped some Malaysians spelt trouble for other
people, turning clouds of smoke back towards Jakarta.
"Every nation will have its day of reckoning," says an official of the
Indonesian Environment Ministry. "We have been warned. Our young
people are breathing this air. They are our future, our human
resources. How sick will they be?"
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ITEM #4
Title: Indonesia Timber King Denies Responsible for Fires
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1997 by Reuters
Date: 10/3/97
Byline: Raju Gopalakrishnan
JAKARTA (Reuter) - Indonesia's best-known timber magnate said on
Thursday he would recommend jail sentences for anyone in the industry
found responsible for the bush fires that have caused a blinding smog
over large parts of Southeast Asia.
But Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, who heads the Indonesia Forestry Society
(MPI), said that logging companies were not primarily to blame.
A variety of factors, including the long dry season, timber smugglers
destroying evidence, and small farmers and oil palm and rubber
plantations clearing land for cultivation were responsible for the
fires, he told Reuters in an interview.
"It's nonsense," he said of charges that forestry companies, most of
which are members of the MPI, were also at fault. "We have to preserve
our forests. It doesn't make sense."
Asked what he would do if MPI members were found responsible for the
fires, Hasan said: "If they do it on purpose I will ask the government
to revoke their licence or even send them to court.
"If they do it on our purpose, to destroy our natural resources, they
can go to jail."
Forestry experts have said that some companies use fire to clear land
after it has been logged. But Hasan said government rules prohibited
other uses of land under the control of the forestry ministry.
"We have to re-forest it immediately," he said.
Hasan, 67, is a close associate of President Suharto, with whom he
says he plays golf three times a week and accompanies on fishing
expeditions.
Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's wealthiest people has him
in 99th position with an estimated net worth of $3 billion, mostly
from timber interests.
The World Wide Fund for Nature has estimated that 600,000 hectares
(1.5 million acres) of bushlands and forests have been burned or are
ablaze in the country's Sumatra and Kalimantan regions.
The fires have spread a choking smog over Singapore, Malaysia, parts
of the Philippines and Thailand for several weeks, although sporadic
rains in some areas have eased the situation.
Hasan said about 100,000 hectares of the burned or burning land
involved areas under forest concessions, adding that the fires had
spread from neighbouring plots including plantations and small
holdings.
"It's because of the neighbours, the long dry season and the strong
wind," he said. In some areas, timber smugglers were setting fires to
roots of trees they had logged to destroy evidence.
"I think our neighbouring country has to help us also," he said,
referring to Malaysia, the only country with which Indonesia shares a
land border. "When people are smuggling logs, they have to catch them
too. This is one of the causes too."
But the main problem, he said, was in the 30 million hectares of
"conversion forests," set aside by the government to be cleared and
used for cultivation.
"The content of these forests are bush and tall grass," Hasan said.
"But we are cleaning this up. Up to now, of the 30 million hectares,
only about 5-6 million have been transferred to good uses, like agro-
land or plantations. When we finish this, then I don't think that the
fires will occur."
Unfortunately, the cheapest and most popular method used to clear
these forests is fire. Because Indonesia is suffering from drought
induced by the El Nino weather phenomenon, some of these fires were
out of control, Hasan said.
Peat land and coal under the forests had caught fire in some places,
he said. Many of these were deep in the interior of Borneo island,
with no roads or other forms of access.
"As soon as it rains it will be finished," Hasan said. "We just have
to wait."
He also admitted that there were some businessmen who owned forest
concessions as well as cash crop plantations.
Hasan himself is the head of conglomerate Astra International, a group
that mainly manufactures cars but also owns palm oil plantations.
But he dismissed suggestions that the government was loath to penalise
companies suspected of spreading the fires because they were
politically well-connected.
"The bigger companies dare not do it. They have a lot at stake."
Astra, he said, would summarily sack any employee found using fire to
clear land.
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ITEM #5
Title: Indonesian Fires No Accident, Singapore Paper Say
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1997 by Reuters
Date: 10/2/97
SINGAPORE - Singapore's leading newspaper used a stunning series of
colour photos on Wednesday to make the point that fires causing
choking smog across Southeast Asia are no accident.
The satellite pictures lead to one conclusion: "Indonesia's forest
fires are no accident or act of nature," the daily Straits Times said.
It ran a series of six photos, including two before-and-after shots at
the top of the front page, to show that forests were being cleared to
make way for plantations, with fire employed as the means of getting
rid of the natural vegetation.
They also show the fires continuing into September, by which time the
smog -- affecting Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines as well as
Singapore and Indonesia -- had hit health-damaging levels.
"The fires raging in Kalimantan and Sumatra appear to have been
started deliberately to clear huge tracts of land on plantations as
well as on small farms," the pro-government Straits Times said.
It noted Indonesian timber barons have denied clearing their
plantations systematically by fire, and Indonesia's Coordinating
Minister for People's Welfare Azwar Anas said the fires were caused by
drought due to the climatic phenomenon El Nino.
But the paper quoted an environmental expert saying El Nino does not
start fires.
"Under normal forest conditions, El Nino or no, it is very difficult
to burn the forests because they remain quite wet," said Anthony
Greer, a senior lecturer in environmental science.
"But in this case, the forests have already been intensively logged,
and this makes them easier to burn."
The report says the pictures, taken by the National University of
Singapore (NUS) Centre for Remote Imaging Sensing and Processing, can
pinpoint the fires within 10 to 20 metres.
They are precise enough that "by just looking at the photographs,
Indonesian authorities should be able to tell who owns a piece of land
which has been cleared by fire, or from which plumes of smoke rise,"
the paper said.
"With these pictures, the fire-starters cannot escape. If the
Indonesian authorities need help, we can give it to them," a director
of the NUS centre said.
Singapore Environment Minister Yeo Cheow Tong has urged Indonesia to
take firm action to control the burning, especially when next year's
fire-prone season starts.
On Tuesday, the Straits Times lashed out editorially at Indonesia, a
partner of Singapore in the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN).
"The patience of Singaporeans and Malaysians is wearing thin," the
editorial said.
"As is evident, the cost of the haze is getting unacceptably high and
it will get higher if not enough Indonesian officials act urgently,
decisively," the daily said in a rare attack after weeks of choking
smog.
**********
ITEM #6
Title: Fires multiplying in Indonesian disaster: World Wide Fund for
Nature
Source: Agence France-Presse
Status: Copyright 1997 by Agence France-Presse
Date: 9/29/97
JAKARTA, Sept 29 (AFP) - The forest fires now raging in Indonesia are
having catastrophic effects on plant and animal life in one of the
richest and most diverse ecologies on the planet, environmentalists
said Monday.
The fires, blamed for a massive cloud of poisonous smoke blanketing
much of Southeast Asia, are spreading into protected forests and
parkland with more areas threatened, the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) said.
"The effects are devastating on terrestrial, arboreal and maritime
life," said Barita Manullang, project coordinator for the WWF in
Indonesia.
"Devastating because not only the habitat but the food chains are
negatively affected," he added.
Threatened protected areas represent about 20 percent of the massive
area already ravaged by the fires, but the area is growing, he said.
Sources with access to satellite information said the fires have
devastated between 600,000 and 800,000 hectares (1.5 million and two
million acres) on Sumatra and Borneo, mostly agricultural and
industrial land.
Between 40,000 and 60,000 hectares of protected forests have already
burned but the number of fires in protected zones has substantially
increased in recent days, said Barita in an interview with AFP.
His revelation was confirmed by the sources with access to satellite
information but no exact figure was available on Monday.
Smog from the fires, which contain solid particles and toxic
chemicals, has caused at least four deaths in Indonesia alone and more
than 35,000 people have received treatment for respiratory ailments.
The fires were described last week by Babar Ali, the WWF president, as
"an international catastrophe going well beyond the borders of
Indonesia."
The thick haze is also under investigation as a possible cause for a
Garuda Airbus crash on Friday in which 234 people were killed and in
the collision of two ships in the straits of Malacca in which 29 are
missing and believed drowned.
But the fires are also taking an ecological toll.
Indonesia is home to some of the world's most unique bird species,
notably in Irian Jaya and Kalimantan, and they are directly threatened
because most birds in the country feed on fruit.
"No more fruiting before next year. It means a scarcity for the
birds," said Barita. "It is very scary."
Marine life, notably on the coral reefs which contain a diversity of
fish and animal life, is also threatened by the fires.
When the rains finally come, they will cause runoff containing ashes
and earth to flow into the sea and the mass will settle on the coral
and suffocate it, experts said.
On land, the fires are destroying animal habitats, which may have had
a surprising result. The official Antara news agency reported that the
Java Tiger, a sub-species declared extinct in the 1970s, had been seen
near villages on the slopes of Merabu volcano in central Java.
Barita was sceptical about this report as was a tiger specialist who
said "it is not enough, because you spotted a tiger in Java, (to say)
that the Java Tiger still exists."
On the other hand, the fires could have a positive impact, if they are
controlled, Barita said, as they would burn off old growth and allow
new grass to grow. This would be good for grass-feeding animals
including deer and goats -- as well as the carnivores that feed on
them.
But Barita said the burning raised questions about how the burned land
would be later used, charging the fires in protected zones were
deliberately set by people hoping the land could be turned over to
agro-business giants once the forests were destroyed.
He said that's what happened after large fires in 1983 and 1994.
"The biggest and fundamental problem is not the fires but the
encroachment and the diminuation of the habitat," he said.
**********
ITEM #7
Title: Asia's Forest Disaster
Source: New York Times
Status: Copyright 1997 by New York Times
Date: 9/27/97
The thick smoke spreading throughout Southeast Asia apparently claimed
234 more lives on Friday, when an Indonesian airliner lost its way in
the haze and crashed.
The smoke, coming from forest fires on the Indonesian island of
Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo, now blankets Singapore,
Brunei and parts of Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
The fires are accelerated by drought but were set by man. In its
headlong rush to cut down its timber and sell it, Asia has saddled
itself with the worst deforestation problem of any continent.
Environmentalists have long warned of the consequences. Asian leaders
have dismissed the critics as subversives inspired by the West to try
to stop Southeast Asia's dazzling economic growth. But while previous
fires have not persuaded governments to halt deforestation, Asia's
leaders should now realize that growth is fleeting when based on the
wanton destruction of natural resources.
The Indonesian Government has attributed previous fires to farmers
clearing their land for crops. This time, because the fires have been
burning for months and satellite data is being made public, the
Government has been forced to acknowledge that the fires coincide
mainly with areas of commercial logging on Borneo and Sumatra.
Indigenous farmers use the same environmentally sound farming methods
they have for centuries, rotating between plots of family land.
The problem is the logging companies, which often show up unannounced,
cut the trees, burn the stumps and set up plantations of oil palms or
eucalyptus and acacia trees for paper and pulp -- usually all
without compensating the farmers.
To compound the tragedy, the precious tropical hardwood is then turned
into virtual garbage.
Most of it is milled into plywood and particle board, largely used in
Japanese construction sites as a disposable mold for concrete.
About 10 percent of Indonesia's plywood comes to North America, where
it is used in construction and cheap shelving.
The export of logs is illegal in Indonesia, so they are milled first.
The plywood trade is a cartel controlled by Mohamad (Bob) Hasan, a
billionaire who is President Suharto's golf partner. Though the
Government has vowed to prosecute the companies that set the fires,
the record is not promising. Loggers can pay local forestry officials
to look the other way, and powerful friends of the Suharto family have
remarkably few legal problems.
Indonesia is not alone. Deforestation is more pronounced on the
Malaysian part of Borneo, and is widespread in Cambodia, Thailand and
other countries. In Indonesia, however, the devastation of commercial
logging is compounded by the Government's policy of subsidizing
migration, which until 1986 was supported by the World Bank. Farmers
from the crowded island of Java are encouraged to move to the forests
of Borneo and Sumatra.
Unfortunately, they bring their old techniques, which not work outside
Java's rich volcanic soil and are eating up the forest.
Some good can come of these tragic fires if they persuade Southeast
Asia and the nations that import their products to take forest
protection seriously. The United States should begin by banning
plywood made of tropical hardwood, or requiring country-of-origin
labeling on wood products so consumers can refuse to buy them. Japan,
often the buyer of products created by ruinous environmental
practices, also needs to rethink its import policies. In the end,
however, Southeast Asia's environmental practices will not greatly
improve until corruption and authoritarianism diminish. There is too
much money to be made by powerful people, and too little attention
paid to those groups trying to bring sanity to reckless
growth.
**********
ITEM #8
Title: Indonesian Fires: WWF Calls for Preventive Actions
Source: WWF Forest Alert
Status: For circulation and publication with accreditation
Date: 9/25/97
------------------------ WWF Forest Alert ---------------------
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============== http://www.panda.org/home.htm
===============
Forest Alert Update #1
25 September 1997
INDONESIAN FIRES: WWF CALLS FOR PREVENTIVE ACTIONS
GLAND, Switzerland - WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature today declared the
fires raging in Indonesia as a "planetary disaster" and a great
tragedy.
"What is happening in Indonesia is an extreme case of man-made natural
disaster," said Dr Claude Martin, Director General of WWF
International.
"Now we need a coordinated international effort to stop the Indonesian
fires and to prevent similar recurrence. Governments must take urgent
preventive measures such as better monitoring of plantations and
forestry companies' operations."
WWF appreciates President Suharto's gesture of apologizing to
neighbouring countries for the smoke pollution, and the Indonesian
Government's threats to revoke land use permits of plantation firms
found guilty of intentional burning. Plantation owners have been
blamed for much of the fires.
Eighty per cent of the fire comes from burning of waste wood to clear
land, which is cheaper than other alternatives, for oil palm and
industrial pulpwood plantations. Land clearance for commercial
plantations has increased dramatically over the past few years in
response to high palm oil prices.
So far, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 hectares of plantations and
forests have been burnt creating haze problems in the neighbouring
countries. In addition to the human lives already lost, there is
unprecedented disruption of road, sea and air traffic.
"The sky in southeast Asia has turned yellow, and people are dying,"
added Dr Martin. "What we are witnessing is not just an environmental
disaster but a tremendous health problem being imposed on millions of
people."
With air pollution at such alarming levels, WWF urges action to reduce
vehicle exhaust emissions, and pollutants from factories and
construction operations, mining and energy generation. Contingency
plans are also needed to prevent further deaths and serious illnesses
from deteriorating air quality.
Recent satellite images indicate that fires are now spreading from
scrublands into forests, although there is no indication that any
protected areas in Sumatra nor Kalimantan have been burned. The
lowland tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Kalimantan are among the
most biologically rich ecosystems on Earth. These forests, unlike
those that grow in drier climates are not adapted to fire, and suffer
greater damage when burned. The current persistent drought can
exarcebate the fires and cause irreparable damage to the forests.
WWF is helping the Indonesian Government in locating and monitoring
the fire spots. Staff and equipment have been provided, and the
organization is looking into long term solutions to help prevent
similar occurrence in the future. These solutions include fire
prevention and improved forest management techniques and expertise.
- ends -
Contact: Katarina Panji in Indonesia at tel: +62-21 7203095, Sabri
Zain in Malaysia at tel: +60-3 7033772, or Chng Soh Koon in
Switzerland at tel: +41-22 3649326.